^ if Kavanaugh gets confirmed, but Democrats win the House in November, maybe we can hope for 2 impeachment hearings in the House before 2020....

Rules for surviving an Autocracy:

Rule#1: Believe the Autocrat.
Rule#2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Rule#3: Institutions will not save you.
Rule#4: Be outraged.
Rule#5: Don't make compromises.
Rule#6: Remember the future.
- Masha Gessen
Source: http://www2.nybooks....r-survival.html

Trump forced AG Sessions to resign, and instead of replacing the AG with the Deputy AG (as is typical/traditional/normal) Trump is, in an unpresidented move, elevating the former AG's chief of staff. This man, Matthew Whitaker, has shown himself to be a lackey of Trump, more publicly in an opinion column about a year ago where he made prejudged that Trump Jr meeting with Russia to get some foreign meddling in U.S. elections, that it was completely fine, and anyone would do it. He also made other comments on how a AG or DAG could hamper the Mueller Trump-Russia probe.... He was basically an unknown before that, and shortly after that he was made AG Sessions' chief of staff.

So some already say his comments create an actual or appearance of a conflict of interest and he should probably recuse himself.

FYI - Apparently the groups that have protests set up to activate if Rod Rosenstein (and/or Sessions?) is fired are going forward. Basically, since Sessions was recused, this new AG can over supervision of the Mueller Trump-Russia probe away from Rosenstein, or worse.

Quote

BREAKING: The Nobody Is Above the Law network is calling for rapid-response protests at 5 PM local time on Thu, Nov 8 in response to Trump's moving oversight of the Mueller investigation in the hands of a lackey who has publicly strategized about how to stifle the investigation.

I think they are supposed to number 400,000 in 900 protests across the U.S.
We'll see how big they are tomorrow, assuming they get coverage.

Rule#1: Believe the Autocrat.
Rule#2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Rule#3: Institutions will not save you.
Rule#4: Be outraged.
Rule#5: Don't make compromises.
Rule#6: Remember the future.
- Masha Gessen
Source: http://www2.nybooks....r-survival.html

The state of the present GOP stands as a lesson for the types of abuses non-secular thinking affords: belief is the committing of intellectual suicide. Once you've left the door open for the bearded old man in the sky, other garbage comes flowing in. Like Trump, and Mitch McConnell, and all the evil they not only perpetrate, but facilitate.

Hanging on to power for the sake of hanging on to power led McConnell to quashing measures to protect Mueller's investigation.

The last few weeks have a chock-full of evidence of malfeasance, if not conspiracy, of Trump's closest associates during the campaign, transition, and early Presidency. Trump himself is implicated in some places, where Trump is referred to as "Individual 1" in his ex-lawyer Micheal Cohen's court case documents.

It also appears likely Manafort thought he could weasel his way out of his charges and play both sides. No clear evidence yet, but it does seem that he may have been trying to string Mueller along and been reporting back to Trump the progress Mueller has made that Manafort has gleaned from his interactions with Mueller's team.

All the conspiracies that Mike Flynn was "set up" by the FBI vanished in smoke in the court room this week, as the Judge that Faux News though would stripe the hide off the the Prosecution for prosecutory misconduct (something the Judge is know for) striped the hide off of Mike Flynn and his defense team, and instead of being sentenced his defense team took the offer from the Judge for a 3 month continuance to see if they could cooperate more and avoid the Judge's wrath.

It seems like many of Trump associates lied to Congress, something Micheal Cohen has been charged with. It seems likely Mueller is going to get all those sealed and locked transcripts showing those lies.

We have all likely become inured to it to various degrees unfortunately. The levels of cognitive dissonance or compartmentalization of Trump supporters' mind must be astronomical.... Though I imagine many of them have simply tuned out the news. Even the non-Trumpist right, and the left, are probably largely worn down by this constant stream of misconduct coming out, and in most cases just supports Occam's razor. While there are new revelations all the time, who didn't think, from the time it came out 11+ months ago, that Trump was in favour and authorized the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal?

And now, the last "adult in the room" (the other two being, pphhhttt, John Kelly former Chief of Staff, and Rex Tillerson former Secretary of State).... Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is out, end of February. It appears he resigned and the straw that broke that camel back (its long been rumoured he has only stayed in to provide stability) is the pull-out-of-Syria-policy-by-tweet of Trump. Abandoning our Kurd allies, but, you know, it was probably on Putin's honey-do list....

Edited by sierraleone, 20 December 2018 - 06:18 PM.

Rules for surviving an Autocracy:

Rule#1: Believe the Autocrat.
Rule#2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Rule#3: Institutions will not save you.
Rule#4: Be outraged.
Rule#5: Don't make compromises.
Rule#6: Remember the future.
- Masha Gessen
Source: http://www2.nybooks....r-survival.html